


high and clear

by feralphoenix



Category: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Mark Twain, Yggdra Union
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the spring of 1429, La Pucelle leads her troops and her prince to the siege of Orléans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	high and clear

**Author's Note:**

> _(even my beloved people will fall like petals_ – god, will I one day make it back to Domrémy, to sleep beneath the trees in your love?)

The dauphin’s hands are chapped around the fingers and palms, skin peeling back in bubbles from blisters that are turning into calluses. A few weeks ago, they were as soft as flower petals. You don’t need the voices to predict that his palms will be battle-hard after a few weeks more, and that even after the war ends they might stay that way for all of his life.

The dauphin’s hands are warm.

He shies away at things like sunlight—like strong breezes, and loud noises, and brightly colored butterflies floating up past his peripheral vision. He shrinks back from the fingertips of peasants offering up garlands, and cowers when tall generals look at him. But he’s teeth-gritted steadfast on the battlefield, and he lets you hold his hands like an obedient child waiting to be led.

He is afraid of unfamiliar things, and he trusts you without question. He’s four years your elder, but you feel a little as if you’ve suddenly acquired a very small brother.

And even though you knew all along that this is how it is meant to be, this is how it _has_ to be, you admit to yourself that you were afraid at the beginning of how this would work out. It was indulgent of you, a bit foolish perhaps: You learned this lesson long before, when you were small and a mad person only needed you to be patient and smile. Even things that have been mistreated for a very long time can and will respond to kindness.

The dauphin has simply unfolded since leaving the castle behind: Every step towards Orléans sees his footsteps surer. Your heart lifts to see him standing amongst the men: One flash of color amidst a wall of steel, like your page in his leathers and like your own banner.

You and all of the others bear the arms and colors of France; the dauphin alone wears the sacred colors of his heritage. His holy weapon stands out amidst the swords and spears of your men: A curved scythe blade like the crescent moon.

“It still feels strange,” he says to you, once, facing the sky. Your campaign has halted near a village for rest, and you and he sit upon the low stone wall at its border, legs kissed by the long grass. “After everything—I’d never imagined that what I am, what I can do, could be of any good to anyone.”

Watching his profile, you feel curiously serene, almost like the first time you saw the saints when you were a little girl. You think you might cry. His cheeks aren’t so sunken, anymore; there’s healthy color in his face now that his skin has seen the sun. His bright hair streams and flaps in the breeze like a flag.

“You have your powers for a reason,” you remind him. “Everything that you were told, all of it, it’s lies meant to keep you in your place and willing to listen to those people. Your whole life, you’ve been force-fed poison in the shape of their words, but you have to fight against it now, with everything you are. You are blessed. Please—if you believe nothing else I say, believe this.”

He’s quiet for a bit.

“I don’t always understand you,” he says. “Things like—how you say we need as much help as we can get, to save Orléans, but then you didn’t let the ladies come along with us when they asked.”

You smile, or try to, and it hurts. “It’s not the right time yet—for the ladies. If I had brought them along, they would only have been hurt, like you were hurt. Worse.”

He shudders. Crosses his arms over his middle, like he’s trying to warm himself up. Today’s weather is soft and clear. “You mean, by the English?”

You can’t look at him anymore, and face the horizon instead, over the tent tops of your camp. “No. I mean by our own soldiers. Our own men—loyal to me, but flawed, and human. They’re not—” and you fumble for the correct words, because God’s guidance is a thing for the fields of battle and politics, and there aren’t bright signposts for how to explain the coldness of the world to a man cloistered away all his life; “—they’re not like us, like you or me or Sieur de Conte. They’re very used to thinking in a certain way. They never touched me when I first came to the army because of how I dress and act, and right now, they don’t look at me like that because they know I am holy, they respect me. They trust you because you have my trust. But a lady without the word of God at her back, a lady who dresses as a lady does—they would see her as a thing to use, not as a comrade.

“The world is hurt, the world is bleeding, everywhere. There are only certain things that any of us can fix, or control. I must save France, but you—one day, when we win your crown, you can purge her ills and lead her into goodness.”

He’s silent again, for a long while, and you wonder if perhaps he didn’t understand, or if you frightened or saddened him.

At last: “I wish that I could be more like you,” he says.

You look at him. His hair is blowing in the wind, bright like fire, like a beacon, like your voices and visions promised you it would be.

“At first I was afraid to do everything because of—of the threat of punishment, because I didn’t want to be hurt, or to disappoint the people around me. Now I’m afraid of what will happen if I’m wrong, if I fail.”

He tucks his hair behind his ears with blistered hands. When you see his profile, his face is scrunched in, tortured.

“There’s so much—light in the world. I could never have imagined. You say that France is ill, and I think that that’s true, but even so. There is so much kindness that exists here, among the people. I want to protect it, to pay back what I can, but I am frightened that even should you win the war, I shall somehow snuff the light out. If I’m to be king—I fear that I will be a king like my father. They say that he had the same powers as me, that his powers drove him to madness, and when I think that I might one day go the same way—

“I don’t know how to be brave, like you.”

You watch the dauphin as he speaks, and you shake your head.

“I’m not brave,” you tell him. “All I have is my faith, and my knowledge of what is right, to spur me onward. If I didn’t trust the word of God, I wouldn’t be able to wield a sword. But you—you’re willing to follow me and fight at my side, my Dauphin. That makes you much braver than me.”

He looks at you for a while, but says nothing, and so the two of you sit in silence with your feet enveloped by the sea of tall grass and watch the sky.

You’re allowed an afternoon unmolested until your dear page de Conte comes jogging up through the wind and the grain, waving and carrying a basket.

“The men are rested and ready to ride out,” he tells you; “what shall we do?”

“Have them start to pack up camp,” you reply. “What do you have there?”

In answer, he presents it to you. There is a thick loaf of bread inside, still warm.

“It is a gift from the village,” says de Conte. “The people wish us godspeed, and said to send word that they believe in La Pucelle and the Dauphin.”

You accept the basket, hold it in the crook of your arm like you held your sister as a child, and you turn to your companion with a smile and an outstretched hand.

“Let us go,” you say.

He takes your hand and allows you to lead him.

 

_(The doors to the audience room open and your heart leaps because this is it; this is the meeting that your voices and visitations have been preparing you for since you left Domrémy, when you walk into the room and lift your head you’ll be face to face with the prince destined for the throne, the man with the holy dragon’s power; you’ll look up past courtly clothes and red hair into golden eyes and your course will be set._

_Except that you don’t, that the eyes you look into are brown, the hair is too short and the light falling on it betrays it as artificial, a wig: which is all it takes for the feeling of Wrongness in your gut to slam in full force._

_You ask them where the dauphin is, and the knights behind you and the men around you stare in confusion but the courtiers in front of you pale. You think: a test, but as you stare from one face to the next, you don’t see telltale gold anywhere. Long red hair might be hidden underneath a wig or a cap, but the angels have taught you to recognize the gold and the power, and your signpost is nowhere in sight._

_You wonder: a trap, but the men in the room make no move for weapons, and you know that something else is afoot in this city, in this pretty gilded cage of a court._

_One of the doors deeper into the castle feels right when you set eyes upon it, and you move towards it decisively—in swift steps, and then in a run when courtiers and servants start to shout. The hall behind the door is bare, and you charge down it with all speed, trusting instinct and intuition only._

_And at the end of your path, you reach a heavy wooden door. It takes most of your strength to wrench it open—by the time you have pulled it wide from the wall, the footsteps of the courtiers and your escort are rattling the halls._

_You lean on the inner side of the door to wedge it open, catch your breath—and when you look up into the hidden chamber, you have the oddest premonition of doom._

_You look upon a room like a cell, wide but dark and bereft of ornamentation. Its only window is cut small and narrow, and the light from your intrusion has overwhelmed the room’s occupant, who has flung both arms up to cover their face as if in fear._

_The person living here—confined here—is a youth, a young man who must only be a handful of years older than you. In the light from the hallway, his hair is as scarlet as it is long, and the cautious lowering of his arms bares to you the telltale shine of gold._

_You are surrounded by the people of the castle and your own host, but they do not matter; you reach out your hand, and try to still your racing heart and horror enough to smile._

_“Your Highness,” you say gently as the dauphin stares wide-eyed, “I’ve come to lead you away.”)_


End file.
